The invention relates to apparatus for the take-up and the storage of thread bundles, produced from high-polymer spinning materials. The threads emerge from a serial arrangement of spinnerets, are solidified by an air blast and drawn off continuously downwards, one bundle from each spinneret. The kind of storage depends upon the reprocessing of the thread bundles to the desired intermediate or end product. If filament yarn is to be produced from the thread bundles, the thread bundle extruded from each spinneret is usually drawn off by means of an arrangement of godets mounted on the take-up machine, moistened and/or treated with a liquid finish and wound up for storage. Starting from the bobbin, the thread bundle is then stretched and, for yarn production, possibly textured and drawtextured.
If, however, the thread bundles are to be reprocessed to staple fibers or fiber yarn, it is customary to draw off first the single thread bundles separately and to apply a finish. After the take-up on the take-up machine, the direction of the bundles is changed from vertical to horizontal and they are combined with correspondingly treated fiber bundles to provide a thread strand which is drawn off laterally by rollers and deposited for storage in a can. Then, the thread strands are continuously drawn off upwards from a plurality of filled cans and combined to a thread tow which is stretched, crimped, dried and possibly heat-set. The two may be intermediately deposited in containers or cut direct to staple fibers which generally are pressed subsequently to bales from which, finally, the fiber yarn is spun.
For the two process operations described above in principle differently designed units and combinations of units, i.e., production plants are employed, according to the present art. They include, as a rule, not only the spinning units, to which the high-polymer melt (coming direct from the polymerization stage or from molten chips by means of an extruder) is fed, but also blow ducts, spinning ducts and finally the special take-up machines having specific devices for storage depending on the end product. The storage devices may then be followed by reprocessing units.
These specialized process operations require that a complete production plant be shut down every time there is no market demand for the one or the other product, i.e., for filament yarn or fiber yarn. And the market demand is exceedingly difficult to predict for certain man-made spinning materials, for instance, polyamide yarns for carpet manufacture.